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Sanlaap is a rescue, rehabilitation and trafficking prevention program for survivors and high risk youth in West Bengal, India. 100 survivors live at Sanlaap’s Calcutta shelter and several hundred youth from the red light communities participate in Sanlaap’s drop-in prevention programs. Sanlaap also engages in legal advocacy, and works with law enforcement and government to improve services for women and children.

DEPDC operates a school and shelter in Northern Thailand for young girls (primarily Burmese and hill tribe ethnic minorities) at extremely high risk for being sold by their parents into sex slavery. Survivors of sex trafficking also live at the DEPDC shelter.

DEPDC’s founder Sompop Jantakra launched the program because he began to notice that all the young girls in his village were disappearing at the age of 10 or 11. He discovered that the children were being sold into prostitution. Firstly their virginity was sold (for about $300) at a hotel in town. This heinous practice involves selling a child to a client for 3-7 days, during which he can do whatever he wants to her, again and again. After this torturous initiation, the girls were then sold to brothels in larger cities, from which many never return.

AFESIP Fair Fashion employs 50 survivors in the creation of silk clothing products including jackets, shirts, trousers, and skirts. AFESIP survivors are highly trained, having received 1-2 years of supportive shelter care, education and training in sewing before being employed in the workshop. These survivors now live independently in the Kampong Cham, the village where the workshop is located.

This program provides an inspiring example of how an economic self-sufficiency program can help survivors truly reintegrate into mainstream society. When the workshop first moved into the rural village of Kompong Cham, the community was generally appalled and unwelcoming. ‘We don’t want those bad girls,’ people said. They feared the survivors would spread AIDS or low moral conduct in the community.

Hagar Design, based in Phnom Penh, trains and employs several hundred survivors and high risk youth in self-sufficiency programs including handicrafts, a café, and a soy milk factory. Hagar also operates an orphanage – the House of Smiles – for the youngest survivors. Sadly, in Cambodia, these can be preschool age children.

The Hagar social work team, comprised of sex trafficking survivors, goes daily into the red light district to gain the trust of the people there and to offer them the opportunity to leave the flesh trade and come to Hagar. Many of the prostitutes have become so demoralized and habituated to their situation, that they cannot see a way out, even if they are no longer literally imprisoned.

Esther Benjamin Trust rescues children who have been enslaved in Indian circuses. The children are often sold to the circuses by desperate parents, or the parents are deceived as the actual circumstances awaiting their children. Girls in these circuses are routinely sexually exploited in private shows. Both boys and girls are deliberately malnourished to stunt their growth, and forced to perform dangerous acts without safety nets, which sometimes results in permanent crippling.

Without education or care, the children soon become very depressed and insecure. It can take months or years of patient counseling and care before they can see any hope of a future. Fortunately, this level of care is exactly what EBT provides.

Based in Kathmandu, Maiti Nepal was our first NGO partner. 450 trafficking survivors and children of survivors live at Maiti Nepal’s shelter – it is one of the largest shelters in the world. Several hundred other survivors and high risk girls live in short-term residences throughout Nepal. Survivors at Maiti are typically rural Nepali girls who were trafficked into Indian brothels between 10 and 14 years of age.

In fact, it was during a visit to Maiti Nepal that we first got the idea for The Emancipation Network, after asking Maiti’s founder what she most needed help with. Her answer: economic self-sufficiency for the older girls, many of whom are 18 or 19 years old with almost no formal schooling. These older survivors want to be able to live independently

Trafficking and slavery occur throughout the world, in every country, including the United States. Currently, TEN has partners in four regions: South and Southeast Asia, Eastern Europe, Africa, and the USA.

Please read the regional descriptions to find out what global slavery looks like today.